An Attempt at 25 Points: The X-Files, Ep. 1

Sigh. Let’s just get this over with: The X-Files, season 10, Episode 1: “My Struggle”

What are the odds that Chris Carter has recently read Knausgaard?

Okay, I get it: Mulder’s giving us a quick 101. His trademark detached tone has always paired nicely with the depth of his obsession.

Time has hardened Scully. Her face and demeanor are lined in zero tolerance for bullshit.

Ah: Mulder and Scully are no longer together. Still, it is a boon of casting to see them in the same frame. That frisson can’t be generated by even the best director.

I’m a Joel McHale fan: Community, The Soup, an enjoyable bit part in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant. But he needs to find a different acting method. Asking me to buy him as a Fox News anchor is like asking me to buy Donald Trump as President.

Nice work, Fox: Annet Mahendru (Sveta) does a fantastic job over at The Americans on FX. (No, 20th Century and FX aren’t the same outfit, but they’re part of the same operation.) Nice little bit of cross-programme casting.

The pudgy doc in the flashback better be Skinner.

Scully’s pause, then lean-in toward Sveta might be the highlight of this episode. “You can read minds? Read this.”

The writing in this episode is like a conspiracy theorist’s Pinterest board: red yarn stretched very thin across newspaper articles, the show’s mythology, and a manic digestion of Fox News coverage over the last decade.

Apparently Skinner’s been carrying some sort of torch for Mulder? Let the fan fic frenzy begin.

Did they cast Bruce Dern as Deep Throat?

Anybody else get the feeling that Mulder is giving the American government way too much credit?

Mulder and Scully’s argument outside Sveta’s house is like a fight between two 16-year-olds who are dating.

I am struggling (whoa, that’s the episode title!): The American government is exploiting alien technology via surveillance, the war in Iraq, droughts, police brutality, Big Ag, FEMA camps, and consumerism?

I don’t think Scully is visceral. I still trust Clyde Bruckman: Mulder will die of autoerotic asphyxiation, and Scully is immortal.

Somewhere a buncha self-congratulatory 20th Century Fox execs are exclaiming with glee: “Look what you can do with a VFX budget in 2015!” (The series began production last year.)

Always nice to see William B. Davis. Might’ve been entertaining to have him vape, but, I’ll take it.

Just for The X-Files, one of my favorite TV shows, I’m inventing a ratings system. For this first episode of season 10, zero out of five little green men.